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Monday, November 26, 2012

I Love Organization

Yes, I do. Does that mean that in my house there is "a place for everything and everything in its place"? Heck no. I have kind of a love/hate relationship with that saying. It certainly sounds wonderful and for maybe a split second it sounds attainable. I'm pretty convinced that it's not though. We don't even have children yet. If we can't make it work now, I'm pretty sure there is no hope for complete organization in our future. That may sound pessimistic to you, but to me it's just being real. Despite my belief that I won't ever have everything in my house organized, I still forge ahead and complete small organization projects as I have the time. Recently, Seth and I tackled two such projects.

First, Seth organized our broom cupboard. I forgot to take a before picture, but just close your eyes and imagine the broom, the mop, the steam mop, the fan duster, the swiffer, and other various cleaning tools piled up in there. Removing any of the aforementioned tools from the cupboard caused an avalanche to ensue. I was getting pretty sick of dodging falling cleaning devices while picking through everything to find the tool that I needed. (Does that make it sound like I clean the house all the time? Haha. We'll just pretend.)

We also wanted to store our ironing board in this cupboard since it is in close proximity to the kitchen where our washer/dryer and iron are located. The most logical place for it seemed to be on the inside of the door so I ordered this ironing board holder from Crate & Barrel because I loved it's sleek, minimalistic design. Yes, I loved the design of an ironing board holder. I'm weird like that. However, it arrived, Seth installed it, and we realized that it wasn't going to work. The ironing board was hanging too low and we could no longer close the cabinet door. On to the next possible solution. Seth found the hooks pictured below at Lowe's for super cheap and voila.

No, they are not sleek and pretty like the holder from Crate & Barrel but they are cheap and functional so I am happy. The next step was getting the broom, mop, swiffer, and fan blade duster off the floor of the cupboard to keep them from piling on top of one another. We purchased a simple organizer with adjustable clips that you can pop the handles in and out of.

For the dustpan, the lint roller, and our small dusters we took advantage of the pegboard already in place and hung them on hooks.

And...done. It's the simple things that make me happy.

The second project was organizing the chaos that was our toolbox. I took this challenge on one afternoon while watching some television.

We had tools and nails and drill bits and other random things covering the console table in our entryway. It had become our tool table and it was ugly. I should have taken a picture for you. Maybe I was just too self-conscious about it to do so. I'll try to work toward full disclosure from now on.

I purchased a clear organizer meant for jewelry at Jo-Ann's a few weeks ago thinking it would be perfect to organize all of our stray hardware. It has dividers that you insert as needed to make custom-sized compartments. First, I spread everything out on the floor to better assess the situation.

Then, I just started putting things into compartments, using the dividers as needed. I used white labels that I had on hand to record any known information about our collection of nails and screws. Sometimes, I just labelled the compartment "miscellaneous fill-in-the-blank (screws, nails, etc)" or "extra furniture parts". Nothing too fancy here.

It turned out that I had just enough space for everything.

And with all of those random pieces and parts cleared out of the toolbox, I was easily able to empty it out completely and wipe away the dust and grime.

Ahhhhhh....soooo much better. I gave Seth a tutorial on where everything in the toolbox is supposed to live now. We'll see how long this lasts. :)

Does anyone else get that extremely happy, weight-has-been-lifted, I-can-conquer-the-world feeling after an organization project? Just me?